Goose Island

Hello to the mega -technology and design consortium moving to Goose Island, Chicago!

TEXTTiles is here to help boost your teamwork, creative expressions and corporate productivity with products and articles we can design to help you get the message across to your associates and customers.

This week we focus on Boeing, one of the companies included in the consortium.

What’s Your Inspiration to Look Up and Fly? Make the plan, feel the inspiration, get to the runway and soar!

I. BOEING CALLS CHICAGO HOME

One of the best reasons for Boeing to be among the companies and industries in the new design consortium is that their headquarters is in Chicago. The location is distinctive, active and busy, being near the METRA Station at the Ogilvie Transportation Center, within easy reach of the Chicago Loop and famous “L” train system.

Most likely, every day if you listen and raise attention to the skies you will see many of the products Boeing produces. Regular flights over the city transport thousands of people every hour to O’Hare, our largest airport, which is northwest of the city, and to Midway, which is south of the city. Those jets make their banks and levels and lay out their approach patterns, coming in like huge kites with engines churning and silver wings cutting through the troposphere.

II. Chicago’s History of Designing, Technological Progress, Education, and Creativity

From its inception, born out of the swamp in the late 1700’s and through the early 1800’s, came a city that increased rapidly in size. With the influx of various peoples from all over the country, from the middle 1800’s, when the Civil War divided the country and caused folks to leave the South and migrate to the North, to this very moment, Chicago has grown in more than population and area. This great city, third largest in America and with what is termed the most beautiful lakefront in the nation, is ideal ground for testing and developing, researching and building.

Chicago is home to the Adler Planetarium with its tradition of research, educational promotion, and inspiring generations of scientists; home to the world- famous Field Museum of Natural History, a gigantic building on the lakefront which houses collections displaying the multi-versity of many nations and cultures, and home also to the Museum of Science and Industry, with a beautiful display of aircraft.

One of these is an exhibit that caught my eyes when I first visited the “MSI”. Yes the museum’s scene opens up the moment one enters the cavernous space and ascends to the next level. But in that area known as the Transportation Gallery, I looked up to see one of the most impressive exhibits ever- a jet appearing as though it was coming in for a landing, suspended just above a display showing downtown Chicago. The plane is in fact a Boeing 727 which has been cantilevered into the structure of the gallery. There are other planes and vehicles as well but this one is very special. A visual and oral feature accompanies the display, giving the impression of a flight complete with air traffic controller communications, lights and action and moving portions on the jet, and sound effects as of takeoff and landing. Many days I have stood through repeat performances of that display and the film that can be viewed before the performance begins. The film shows how the 727 came to Chicago and was taken apart and brought into and assembled in the museum. Originally in another livery pattern that showed its first set of colors, it has been given a fresh look and remains a standard at the museum for families and aviation enthusiasts.

III. POSITIVE ATTRACTION: LOOK UP AND MAKE PROGRESS

The art of flight is one of constant improvement and testing and research. In the hundred- plus years since the first planes took to the skies we have recorded advances in wing design, in powering the aircraft, in how the instruments are made and arranged, in ways to make the pilots comfortable, and in ways to take on more and more passengers and cargo. Planes became larger and heavier; they required new kinds of fuels, new wiring, new lighting, and upgraded safety features such as those now delivered on the most modern passenger jets.

Monsters such as the Boeing 747-400 and now the magnificent 747-8 are the rulers of the skies, taking over from decades of reliability from the 707 series. People in the Chicago area are accustomed to seeing the standard jet of Southwest Airlines, the 737 series. Looking at Boeing’s website, there is forthcoming the next generation of this family of jets, with a -900 series in production and use around the world. The 7 series has included such models as the 757, 767 and 777

Of necessity there is the need to bring up the unmanned craft that inhabit our skies. Drones can be used for more than the typical surveillance tasks with which people associate them as regards privacy. The drone crafts can be used to make deliveries, spray crops, and go into areas where it would be too hazardous for people, such as disaster areas where there could be dangerous chemicals or animals, into situation of violence such as hostage situations, or into military incidents where troops must go into or around buildings that are unfamiliar and that are potentially booby-trapped. Drones can be life- savers and that is how we can take a better view of this brand of aircraft.

Of course now you can be the executive of the skies with Boeing’s fantastic line of business jets. Creating your own corporate jet is rather as designing a grand house or making a custom car – you can have it any way you want it. Many people think of owning a private island as the attainment of true expandable wealth and the exhibition of that wealth, so now if you own the island why not construct your own airfield, and get the jet that will complete the picture? Fly in real luxury, rule the aeries of the wild blue expanse, and enjoy every moment!

IV. The Uplifting Conclusion: The Author’s History of Enjoying Flight The Corporate Connection Has a Human Side.

It seems this flight buff cannot get enough of watching the patterns outgoing and inbound to Chicago’s airports. But this history started in Nashville, where flying regularly for vacations and later for business was just part of the yearly picture of activity. The flight pattern in and out of Nashville’s Berry Field (BNA) is over our houses so the rumbling noises of the jets was just a natural part of the setting.

As a child I could not wait to get to the airport, just as soon as I knew we were going on a trip I would get out the luggage and anticipate that ride to the airport, being at the ticket counter, getting on the jet and heading into the great and welcoming skies. Flight was and continues to be fun, bringing out “the kid in me” and inspiring creative thoughts to soar and uplift my spirits. Later my father and I made the annual trek to Smyrna to the big air show held on that base. We would get the flight pattern of the military jets coming right over our house; one year a pair of F-15’s came in low and loud and I ran outside just in time to see them turn left over our backyard.

Are Times and life are down for you? Listen for the uplift, the change in the noise of the engines, and then see the smooth inbound four -engine silver “heavy” making its way to a safe landing. Troubles disappear, the mind and the body seem to rise away from the hard ground, and you realize, “There are people in that plane who are just like me, who are having challenges, who are rushed and baffled and hurried about, who needed that uplifting experience of flight. I can see it; I can leave the bounds of this earth and this city behind if only for a few seconds and my thoughts can fly.”

There is then no need to welcome Boeing to Chicago- they are home, they have made a successful landing, and they are going to open up new fields of technology and design and work for many people just waiting to carry on the grand traditions of everything related to the fine art of flight.